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Ombudsman steps into yet another hornet’s nest: DiManno

Ontario ombudsman André Marin is training his sights on training protocols and policies to de-escalate violent situations in wake of police shooting of Sammy Yatim.

Ontario Ombudsman Andre Marin announced on Thursday that his office will launch an investigation into police de-escalation techniques in the wake of the recent shooting death of 18-year-old Sammy Yatim. (TIM ALAMENCIAK / TORONTO STAR)

Marin got that individual’s name backwards when he re-tweeted one of his responses. Because the Star has been unable to independently confirm the constable’s identity, we are not using his name at this point. The purported harasser is on vacation and didn’t return this newspaper’s phone messages. Deputy Chief Paul Martin has assured Marin that an internal investigation has been launched into the matter. Marin will not reveal how he managed to identify the alleged culprit.

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Let’s just say the vitriol, the bullying, doesn’t surprise me. Nor does the here-there-everywhere ombudsman’s willingness to step into yet another hornet’s nest of police oversight bureaucracy. Now, in the aftermath of a Toronto constable shooting dead a knife-wielding teenager on an empty streetcar, Marin is training his sights on training protocols and policies to de-escalate violent situations.

“The investigation we’re conducting has nothing to do with the criminality elements,” Marin told a press conference, “or the conduct of the subject officer under investigation. We’re conducting an investigation as to the systemic response to conflict by police services in Ontario.”

There have been countless inquests into similar shootings and thick dossiers of cloned recommendations gathering dust.

“Are we content to just move along, shrug along, like we’ve been doing the last 20 years? Or are we going to look at the police response to this? It seems to be like Groundhog Day, inquest after inquest, police shooting after police shooting.”

Marin quotes Einstein: “Insanity is repeating the same mistakes and expecting different results.”

While one person’s sins are exclusively his own, the brash taunting of the provincial watchdog, apparently by a cop, speaks to a deeper conflict of wills and the much broader resistance — an oft-demonstrated disrespect for civilian authorities — from the forces of law and order. Individually, by thrust of their powerful police unions, or via pushback by senior commanders — Chief Bill Blair launched a preemptive counter-offensive in radio remarks recently after Marin indicated he was pondering a systematic probe — the not-so-thin blue line has largely held fast.

Since its creation, the Special Investigations Unit has had a bitch of a time securing co-operation from police in its investigations. Blair emphatically disputes this. Yet, as Marin stated in one of his two earlier probes of SIU efficacy, the agency has, for example, written to police on 82 occasions, offering guidelines about appropriate confrontation response methods, all of which were ignored.

“There comes a point where you’ve got to do something,” Marin, former director of the SIU, told the Star following his presser.

“This goes back 20 years, through my time as director of the SIU and the youth shootings at that time. Shooting after shooting, inquest after inquest, recommendations after recommendations.”

He points to the “hodge-podge” of regulations for conflict de-escalation as adopted by police services around Ontario. No consistent standard exists, though all police forces are creatures of the provincial government. Indeed, the last time Queen’s Park agreed on across-the-board standards was when pursuit regulations were issued in the late ’90s, requiring police involved in a car chase to obtain authorization from a senior officer at the station.

Marin maintains the provincial government has been receptive to, and acted upon, recommendations put forth by his office on other contentious matters he’s undertaken. “We’ve got a batting average of almost 100 per cent.”

Interestingly, one issue where Queen’s Park has dug in its heels, won’t budge an inch, was the response to Marin’s proposal that the SIU’s mandate be removed from the Police Services Act, enabling it to operate under utter legislative independence.

“Take the SIU out of the PSA, with consequences for failure to co-operate. If you don’t co-operate with the SIU, you face prosecution — that simple.” This, of course, would not apply to subject officers, who would retain the right to silence shared by civilians. “No more of this ‘put it in a complaint to the (Office of the Independent Police Review Director)’, or writing to a police chief who will never answer back. Under the Ombudsman’s Act, if I ask for co-operation and don’t get it, that’s an offence punishable by jail. So when the SIU writes to Chief Blair and says, your officers trampled the scene, I wasn’t able to retrieve bullet cartridges, he would have to deal with it or face consequences. Right now, there are no consequences except in the court of public opinion.”

Queen’s Park aversion to Marin’s SIU proposal is all too evident in the following extract from an internal Ministry of the Attorney General briefing note: “As you know, the decision was made at the time of the Report’s release that — largely due to vehement police opposition — we will not be considering the recommended legislative changes in the near term.

The 2011 note, from one bureaucrat to another, continued: “At some point, we may have to communicate that we will not be legislating, however that time is not now. Marin typically does not conduct any public communications regarding ‘report-backs’ — he usually gets his media hit off report releases and then moves on. We need not be overly concerned that he will criticize us on the basis of this letter.”

But that time may be approaching. Certainly, since the shocking fusillade of bullets that killed 18-year-old Sammy Yatim less than two weeks ago — nine shots in 11 seconds, the appalling episode captured on civilian cellphone video — there has arisen a public clamouring for review of police tactics and training.

Marin’s review has a broader — or perhaps narrower — intent than investigating that singular incident, which is the responsibility of the SIU.

“It’s a narrow issue but it can make a huge difference for the next 20 years,” he insists. “Police services don’t exist in a vacuum. The provincial ministry is the boss. They oversee, they direct police. They’ve been very quiet since the late ’90s, but the question I’m asking at this stage is, has the moment come for them to take action?”

The timing is right.

“There’s an incredible amount of public good will and public support for it, combined with an equal dose of outrage.”

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